


you were filling your rivers up (with blood of your own)

by voilawriter



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:48:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25870843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voilawriter/pseuds/voilawriter
Summary: or Katara Brings Hama Home, told in drabblesZuko signs the release orders, one after the other, without even looking at them. Maybe some people would say that he's not being responsible; that he's not a good Firelord, but Katara knows that it's not carelessness he's displaying, but trust. Trust in her, without thought. But she doesn't feel guilty. She's Katara of the Southern Water Tribe, and she is not their last waterbender. She will never turn her back on someone who needs her. That includes Hama.
Relationships: Hama & Katara (Avatar)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 93





	you were filling your rivers up (with blood of your own)

**Author's Note:**

> Not at all qualified to weigh in on the discourse about Hama going on in the fandom on tumblr and twitter, but I couldn't get this out of my head. Canon compliant for the show, but (I assume) not for the comics. 
> 
> Title from Corneille's [I'll Never Call You Home Again](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrI3eCEhJyA). A great song, but not a reflection of this fic at all message wise.
> 
> Made Katara and Sokka's tribe the Tundra Wolf tribe because the warriors wore wolf heads into battle. If there is some canon contradicting this, please let me know.

Zuko signs the release orders, one after the other, without even looking at them. Maybe some people would say that he's not being responsible; that he's not a good Firelord, but Katara knows that it's not carelessness he's displaying, but trust. Trust in her, without thought. Maybe she should feel guilty about what she's doing; she's betraying her friend and putting the fragile world peace their little group had clawed out of Ozai's grasping fingers at risk. But she doesn't feel guilty. She's Katara of the Southern Water Tribe, and she is not their last waterbender. She will never turn her back on someone who needs her. That includes Hama.

.

.

.

Katara escorts the Bloodbender from the moment she walks out the prison doors. Maybe she shouldn't think of the old woman like that, as the Bloodbender. She should think of her as an Elder of the tribe. She will, Katara tells herself, she will. But right now, when they still stand on Fire Nation shores and Hama is in the hands of the people who locked her away, who killed her friends, who decimated their tribe, it's best to think of her as the Bloodbender. It’s easier to remember then the two truths of the situation; that she is dangerous, and she is in danger. Katara eyes the Fire Nation Home Guard that escort them to the port as suspiciously as she eyes Hama. The Puppet Master is a horror story told to scare soldiers and children all across the islands. The soldiers are a horror story lived through by every member of the Southern Water Tribe. Neither moves towards retaliation, but the Bloodbender smiles at her vigilance.

.

.

.

The ship they sail home is not her father's. Chief Hakoda and Sokka have remained in Caldera, negotiating peace down to the smallest of considerations. Katara doesn't care about fishing rights or tariffs on ice and spices. She cares about her people: her tribe and her friends. So the ship is not her father's. It is Bato’s.

She doesn't know the other released prisoners. Most of the Tundra Wolf tribe had stayed with Chief Hakoda. Katara cannot shame them for their warrior loyalty, but she wishes they would remember their mothers, sisters, and daughters a bit more readily. Loyalty to their fellow warriors is fine, but what would be waiting for them back home? Who would be left to greet them when they finally returned?

.

.

.

Zuko had promised her that he had not turned his ship around. She had asked that first night they stayed on Ember Island. And she'd seen the shock dawn on Aang and Sokka's faces. They had never considered their broken word to the prince. She had. Gran Gran had. But they both knew that helping the Avatar end the war was more important than the last Southern outpost of the Tundra Wolf tribe. She'd hugged her Gran Gran goodbye without knowing if she'd ever see her, her village, or any of its inhabitants ever again.

When she asked, Zuko’s mouth had tightened into a grim line. Suki’s eyes went wide. He’d burned down the Kyoshi warrior’s village for harboring the Avatar, and there hadn’t been any promises made in exchange for their safety that were broken.

But the prince had shaken his head.

“No, Katara. I didn't." He'd hesitated. “I thought about it, but I decided pursuing the Avatar was more important. We never went back to your village”

Their mission to find Yon Rha, their field trip as Aang called it, had allowed her to forgive him. But this, this means that they can be friends.

.

.

.

Katara is glad it is Bato.

Sokka and her father had thought it was a horrible idea. Sokka had mimed out the gruesome puppetry he'd experienced the night of the full moon, and called Katara crazy for even considering going back for Hama.

“I can handle her. I'm a master too now.” The ‘I'm a bloodbender too now’ was unspoken, but Sokka's uncomfortable expression showed that he'd heard it all the same. Still, the reminder must have helped his worries. He hadn’t protested again.

Her father had cast his own worried looks over her when he'd heard her plan. He'd made some noises about returning to the South with her, a family trip.

But when neither Sokka nor Chief Hakoda could pull themselves away from negotiations, Bato had volunteered for the job.

She’d almost rejected the offer, not wanting a surrogate-father being overly protective or aggressive. But his face shows the same yearning of Hama’s. Of Katara’s. They’ve been separated from the pack too long. It was time for them to go home.

.

.

.

Bato's easy acceptance at Hama’s stories is more a balm to Hama than Katara's fury. Hama has anger enough at the Fire Nation, she doesn’t need the burden of Katara’s too.

So when Hama explains how she made the rats dance, how she learned the phases of the moon by the swell of her power, how her only connection to home was through the sick puppetry that Katara despised, that Katara had learned, Katara clenches her teeth to stop herself from screaming. The peace she had found after the confrontation with Yon Rha, and her long talks with Aang that followed, seems very far away. She almost storms off, but manages to just keep her seat in silence.

Bato simply listens.

.

.

.

The small ship-safe fire flickers across Hama’s face as she shares the story of her escape. How she’d stumbled from the prison after controlling the guards’ blood; terrified, of them and herself. How she wanted to free the other waterbenders, but she couldn’t remember their names, their faces, even though they’d been imprisoned beside her for a decade. She could only feel their presence with her bending, like they were simple water skins. She’d fled to save them; to save herself from becoming a kin slayer.

When she’d returned to the prison the next week, so desperate to free them that she wasn’t even waiting for the power of the next full moon, they were already gone. The Fire Nation had learned of her escape, and deemed the prison insecure.

No one knew where the prisoners were taken. She'd asked the guards, and their families, and the villagers nearby. She hadn’t asked politely. They really hadn’t known.

But no bodies had turned up, so she had kept hoping. It was the hope that killed her, that warped her. Maybe if she just caught the right one, if she twisted them in just the right way, they would tell her what she wanted, needed, to know.

Katara and Sokka arrived before that ever happened. (That’s how she says it. Katara and Sokka. Not the Avatar. Because he was incidental in the story to her.)

.

.

.

Katara still held fear in her heart, even with Zuko's assurances. As they sail into view, she can see Sokka's broken attempt at a wall. Behind it, a wall of ice rises, thick and sturdy. Pakku had come, just as he'd promised.

Hama hmms in derision beside her. When Katara raises an eyebrow in question the Elder huffs.

“Northerners. Always building impractical walls with no defense behind them. What we need are traps.”

Katara almost mentions that the war is over. That they won't need walls or traps now that there is peace. But for Hama the war isn't over. It doesn’t even feel over to Katara, who was born into a war nine decades old. She doesn't know if it ever will feel over. She doesn't know what peace really even means. But she looks at the Elder gazing at the wall of ice with plans for the future being spun behind her eyes and knows she made the right choice.

.

.

.

For some reason, Katara expects Pakku to be there to greet them. His wall looms over the village, after all. But the Northern Master must still be in Ba Sing Se, assisting General Iroh in righting the city after its brief, but oppressive, occupation.

Katara looks at her village, protected by a wall, but still starving and sparse, and forces herself not to be bitter.

(Hama looks at her village and forces herself not to cry, not to kiss the ice beneath her, not to grab the closest child to make they are real, that this is real, she is home, and it was not all destroyed.)

“Hama?” A voice says, from the back of the small cluster of villages who did come out to greet them. How her Gran Gran recognizes the elder waterbender after all of these years, Katara never finds out. But she thinks she understands. She knows that she will be able to recognize Toph in fifty years by the way she shifts her feet, and Suki by her confident smile. Aang and Zuko will be just as easy to identify, even without the badges they wear on their faces.

Katara cannot think about being separated from Sokka for that long. A life without his presence by her side is impossible to imagine.

.

.

.

After the Elders meet and hug and cry, Gran Gran invites Hama to tell her story at the main fire that night. Hama hesitates, but agrees.

Later, Katara pulls her grandmother aside.

“It’s not a good story Gran Gran”

“Long ones never seem that way, until we share them.”

Katara doesn’t want proverbs, and Gran Gran rarely gives them. It could be Pakku’s bad influence, but it’s probably just her grandmother attempting to comfort a granddaughter she no longer really knows. Katara can see the way Gran Gran is studying her, trying to match up the collection of hardened edges with the girl who left just a few months before.

Katara pulls her into a tight hug.

“I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have left.”

You had to. You know that.” And Katara did. But that doesn’t make it easier to bear.

“Gran Gran, we have to help her. Hama needs us.”

Katara could not imagine a life without Sokka, without the tribe. Hama had lost them all. Katara had to help her find her way back, for both of their sakes.

“Oh, Katara, of course she does. And we’re tribe. She has us.”

.

.

.

Katara, Gran Gran, and Hama sit cozily in Gran Gran’s home. A fire burns in the middle of the room, and a pot of stewed sea prunes boils merrily in its heat.

Later, Katara will strengthen Pakku’s walls, and Hama will praise her technique even as she critiqued the design.

Later, Hama will teach Katara how to bend ice bergs that will tear through the lower hull of an iron ship, before the lookout ever sees the tip spearing out of the water.

Later, Hama will tell her story by the main fire and the tribe will listen. Some will be horrified, some vindicated, some scared. But they will understand. Hama is tribe, and she was separated from them, from herself.

Later, Hama will bend an army of snow warriors for Sokka’s young students to fight. And she will smile when they dance and play among them, tossing their spears aside.

Later, Hama will show Katara how to freeze and unfreeze huge swaths of the pack ice, how to induce and ease the pain of labor, how to make water steam as easily as it freezes.

Later, they will develop a method on how to use bloodbending to unblock chi, to staunch wounds, to regulate a heartbeat.

Later, they will both beam with pride as Katara’s young daughter bends a pile of snow to soften a fall for her brother.

Later, Katara will call her Master Hama without fear, or irony, or guilt.

But that is all later. For now, Katara only settles next to the Elder as Hama tells her story, just to Katara and Gran Gran. And she listens.

.

.

.


End file.
